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Syria Plane Shot Down By US After Warnings Not Heeded

A U.S. fighter jet early Tuesday morning shot down an armed “pro-regime” Shahed-129 drone in the skies over southern Syria as it advanced on U.S. -led coalition forces, according to U.S. Central Command.A Syrian jet was shot down by a USA warplane on Sunday in an area close to Raqqa which is now held by the Islamic State.But Russia, which has been propping up the regime of President Bashar al-Assad, denounced the downing of the Syrian plane as “military aggression” from the USA and a violation of global law.The drone, a Shaheed-129, was hit by an F-15E Strike Eagle after it “displayed hostile intent and advanced on coalition forces”, the USA military said in a statement.The Russian Defense Ministry announced Monday that it suspended the deconfliction channel with the United States for incident prevention in Syria following the attack.The Syrian plane destroyed on Sunday, a Su-22 fighter bomber, was hit after reportedly dropping bombs near the town of Tabqa in Raqqa province.In Syria, Russia announced on Monday that it had suspended a military hotline with United States forces and threatened to shoot down coalition planes that flew west of the Euphrates river after the USA shot down a Syrian-piloted bomber that flew too close to a US-supported force advancing on the Isis bastion of Raqqa in northern Syria.”We have agreed in the past, that is we and the Russian Federation pro-regime forces, that operations that the coalition were conducting in Syria were effectively degrading ISIS capability, and will work to restore that de-confliction chain in the next few hours”, Dunford said.”Australia is anxious about the suspension of the de-confliction line between Russian Federation and the United States as a result of the downing of the Syrian jet”, said Dr Khatib told CNN.That was followed June 6 by another strike against an Iranian-backed pro-regime militia when it came into the de-confliction zone with a tank, artillery, anti-aircraft weapons, armed technical vehicles and more than 60 soldiers. “This is the same location where another pro-regime UAV dropped munitions near Coalition forces before it was shot down, June 8″.Royal Australian Air Force has halted air missions over Syria.We are getting ever deeper into this six-year sectarian and civil war.Canada also has 200 special forces troops in northern Iraq, along with a helicopter detachment and a combat hospital.The US military said it was willing to continue to cooperate with the Russians to avoid an aerial incident.”All kinds of airborne vehicles, including aircraft and UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles] of the global coalition, detected to the west of the Euphrates river will be tracked by the Russian SAM systems as air targets”.The Syrian government has said that the USA move “reveals with no doubt the truth about the U.S. support of terrorism”, according to state media. The statement added, the drone, “continued to advance on the Coalition position without diverting its course it was shot down”.